Friday, April 8, 2016

Moscow’s Approach to Resolution of Conflicts is to Freeze Them and Wait, Alksnis Says

Paul
Goble

Staunton, April 8 – Moscow has
adopted an extremely successful approach to many of the conflicts in the
post-Soviet space: it “freezes” them and then sits back and “waits” while
others rush in to propose this or that settlement, something that works to
Russia’s benefits because their proposals would impose enormous costs on one or
all of the participants.

The
Moscow commentator makes this point in a commentary about the recent violence
in Karabakh, violence that as she notes has prompted Western writers and
diplomatists to suggest there must be “a solution” but convinced Moscow and its
allies on all sides that the current “frozen” state is better than any of these
“solutions.”

“In
the long list of ‘mortal sins’ of Russia, that the West has composed,” she
says, “a new point appeared not so long ago,” although it is really difficult
to call it new given that Moscow has been practicing it for “more than 20
years,” although many in the West have begun to recognize it only recently.

This
“sin,” Alksnis continues, consists of the following: “Russia in the post-Soviet
space has created and supports a number of frozen territoria conflicts which it
uses in its own geopolitical interests.”Among these are Transdniestria, South Osetia, Abkhazia, and of course
Nagorno-Karabakh.

Russia,
she says, is guilty as charged, even though many of these conflicts arose
because of complexities far beyond the capacity of Moscow to manage. But of
course, “to accuse any state of using the geopolitical levers in its possession
for the defense and advancement of its national interests is very funny.” That
is something that all states which can do.

Moscow’s
position, Alksnis says, is “extraordinarily simple: these conflicts in the
framework of the existing world political-legal system are extremely difficult
or in places impossible to solve, and attempts to do this by ignoring the
system are more illegal, amoral and in human than keeping them frozen.”

The
prospects for resolving these conflicts “in the current system” are both “simple
and sad,” she says, in that the solutions proposed inevitably involve “the
forcible and illegal seizure of the territory” of one state, “ethnic/religious
cleansing which at times recalls genocide, or a combination of both processes.”

That
is why Russia prefers to freeze these conflicts using both carrots and sticks
for each side rather than “solve” them via such horrors, Alksnis continues. And
it is a reflection of how “Russia shamelessly uses its dominant position as the
main regional power in order to achieve the result it needs, in this case, the maintenance
of the Karabakh problem in a ‘cold’ status.”

In
sum, the Moscow commentator says, “Russia not simply freezes conflicts around
the perimeter of its border; it has learned to wait” because only by waiting is
it possible that some more acceptable arrangement can be found.

Alksnis
does not say, but her analysis implicitly contrasts Russia’s approach with that
of Western leaders who seem compelled to try to find a solution and to find it
quickly.In diplomacy, it is generally
recognized that those who seek something and especially who seek it quickly are
in a weaker position than those who can wait and let others come to them.

That
is what Russia has done in the case of Karabakh, the other frozen conflicts
around the Russian periphery, and on other conflicts in the region and world as
well.And because of how the West has
responded, publishing calls for solutions and racing to Moscow to try to
achieve them, Russia has been able to achieve more than its real power
justifies.

On
the one hand, this combination has allowed Moscow to constantly point out all
the problems with these Western solutions, thus winning support in places it
doesn’t deserve. And on the other, it has used this Western tendency to build
up its own reputation as the arbiter of all such conflicts, again something
that works for Russia but against the West.